Mediagazer: AOL CEO pitches investors on Yahoo deal: sources (Reuters)

2:50 PM ET, October 13, 2011

Top News:

Steve Myers / Poynter:

WSJ confirms side deals in paid circulation boost at Journal's Europe edition — The Wall Street Journal follows the Guardian's story about a circulation scheme at the Journal's sister paper in Europe with its own story confirming many of the details first reported by its competitor.

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, CJR, Felix Salmon, Jack Shafer and Talking Biz News

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

WSJ circulation figures to be investigated — European edition of Rupert Murdoch's flagship title under scrutiny over allegations of artificially boosting sales figures — The newspaper circulation watchdog is set to launch an investigation into Rupert Murdoch's flagship Wall Street Journal Europe …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Press Gazette and Media Matters for America

Steve Myers / Poynter:

Dow Jones calls Guardian allegations of WSJ Europe circulation scheme ‘inflammatory’ — Dow Jones is refuting allegations by the Guardian that The Wall Street Journal Europe paid a third party, through other companies, to buy its newspapers as part of a scheme to boost its circulation.

Discussion: Future of Journalism and paidContent

Ryan Chittum / CJR:

Wall Street Journal Europe Sourcing Was Unusual — And the CEO of the firm involved is a former Journal executive — We now know, thanks to reporting in the both The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal itself, that Andrew Langloff, recently resigned publisher of The Wall Street Journal …

Discussion: Forbes, msnbc.com and Journalism.co.uk

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

New York Times Plans Staff Reductions — In the midst of a deteriorating advertising climate, The New York Times plans to eliminate up to 20 newsroom positions and seek additional savings in the business units, the company said Thursday. — The reductions, described by the New York Times Company …

Discussion: Poynter, Gawker, The New York Observer, Business Insider, New York Magazine, Huffington Post, On Media's Blog and The Wrap

Rachel McAthy / Journalism.co.uk:

WEF calls for pressure on Eritrea to release journalists — Erik Bjerager renews calls for the release of all journalists detained in Eritrea, as he presents the 2011 Golden Pen of Press Freedom to the brother of Dawit Isaak — The president of the World Editors Forum today called …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

‘Arab spring’ revolutions fail to provide greater press freedom — The fall of repressive regimes in north Africa and the Middle East, in the so-called Arab spring, has failed to usher in greater press freedom, according to a global media organisation. — A report by the World Association …

Discussion: Media Network

MediaMonkey / Guardian:

Financial Times's FT Tilt service to close — Puzzling news out of FT Towers on London's South Bank: the pink 'un's flagship online emerging markets service, FT Tilt, is being shut down after just nine months. The reason? Slow subscription sales, apparently - showing once again how difficult …

Discussion: Folio, paidContent, Felix Salmon and Talking Biz News

Reuters:

AOL CEO pitches investors on Yahoo deal: sources — (Reuters) - AOL Inc CEO Tim Armstrong has been meeting with top shareholders in the past couple of weeks to push the idea of a sale to Yahoo Inc that could wring up to $1.5 billion of cost savings, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Adweek, Reuters, Techland, Guardian, Forbes, WebProNews, Deadline.com, CNET News and Electronista

Ben Fritz / Company Town:

Apple prepping movie cloud service — Apple Inc. is preparing to put movies in the cloud, entering a market in which it may be both competitor and ally to a similar offering backed by most Hollywood studios. — Representatives of the iPhone and iPad maker have been meeting with studios …

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Home Media Magazine, CNET News, SlashGear, Mashable!, TUAW, Business Insider, GigaOM, Electronista, MacStories, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac, Engadget, App Advice and Future of Journalism, more at Techmeme »

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

A News Story Is Growing With ‘Occupy’ Protests — ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Splashed across the front page of the local newspaper here on Tuesday was the story of a 24-year-old Occupy protester named Keith Cuesta. He was not in New York, where some have been living in a park near Wall Street …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Chickaboomer and Capital New York

Jesse Holcomb / Journalism.org:
Occupy Wall Street Drives Economic Coverage

Discussion: Forbes, Mediaite, Media Matters for America, On Media's Blog, Poynter, Capital New York, Salon.com, Washington Times, Future of Journalism, TVNewser, Multichannel and @jcstearns

Andrew Gauthier / TVSpy:

Kansas City Stations Refuse to Share Raw Footage with Investigators in Lisa Irwin Case — After receiving grand jury subpoenas requesting that they share video footage connected to the disappearance of 10-month-old Lisa Irwin, Kansas City stations plan to cooperate with investigators …

Discussion: Kansas City Star, B&C and TVNewser

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Bloomsburg Press-Enterprise's post-floods paywall a folly or financially sound? — Journalists are reacting strongly to the Bloomsburg Press-Enterprise's stance that anyone who wants its news should have to pay for it. Readers had asked the paper to drop its website paywall for an extended …

Discussion: The Bloomsburg Daily

Steve Myers / Poynter:

FBI: We didn't raise concerns about Globe naming Bulger informant, but that doesn't mean we approved it — The Boston Herald continues its criticism of rival Boston Globe's decision to publish the name of the informant who tipped off the FBI to the whereabouts of James “Whitey” Bulger.

Discussion: Boston Herald and Media Nation

Merrill Knox / TVNewser:

Current TV CEO: 'Our Three Competitors are About Breaking News, and We're About Fixing It' — For Current TV, the addition of former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to the primetime lineup was an easy decision. — “When Joel [Hyatt] and I sat down with her and sort of began a conversation …

Discussion: FishbowlLA and NY Daily News

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Editor Janine Gibson banks on 'The Guardian's' distinctly British appeal to the ‘internationalist’ Yank — One morning just a day or two into the new year of 2011, Janine Gibson was curled up on a couch in Soho, where she'd been staying for a winter vacation from her native England.

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

CNN: Blackberry Outage Impacting Users On Almost Every Planet — There's no escape. The Blackberry service outage is now impacting users on almost every planet, CNN reports. Tatooine and Coruscant appear to not have been affected yet, but users all over Geonosis, Naboo and Yavin were reportedly hit hard.

Discussion: Forbes, BBC, New York Times and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Poynter:

Let's take news apps out of the newsroom and create products instead of content — There was a great story in The Onion a few weeks back, right after Steve Jobs announced that he was stepping down as CEO of Apple. The headline read, “New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm thinking printers'”

Discussion: (Re)Structuring Journalism

Newsosaur / Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Engagement: The new digital metric — Everyone knows you have to measure things correctly to manage a business well. But the converse of this axiom is that you can get into a lot of trouble if you measure the wrong things. — Unfortunately, this has happened in the newspaper industry with respect to the digital media.

Greg Sandoval / CNET News:

Netflix licenses reruns from CW Network — The CW Network series “The Vampire Diaries” is coming to Netflix's streaming library. — Netflix has licensed content from CBS and Time Warner's jointly operated CW Network, the companies announced today. — The agreement is for four years …

Discussion: Media Decoder, AllThingsD, Mashable! and Business Insider

Carol Marie Cropper / NetNewsCheck Latest:

Paper's Paywall Proves Boon For Competition — In Albuquerque, N.M., the Albuquerque Journal's paywall — erected in 2001 — has let the rest of the market's online players catch up to the top site. Now, with aggressive mobile plans, the area's TV sites are poised to breakout.

Discussion: Erik Wemple

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The contribution conundrum: Why did Wikipedia succeed while other encyclopedias failed? — The guys behind Wikipedia weren't the first to experiment with creating a crowd-sourced online encyclopedia. They were just the first ones to do it successfully, on a worldwide scale.

Discussion: Berkman Center

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

Lee Cowan gets Champagne Toast Upon Return to CBS — As TVNewser first reported in August, Lee Cowan has changed channels and is returning to CBS News after four years with NBC News. — Cowan will continue to be based in Los Angeles and will report for CBS News as National Correspondent.

Rachel McAthy / blogs.journalism.co.uk:

wef11: ‘News industry is in the vortex of a fast changing world’ — Newspapers are “in a vortex of a fast changing world”, the new president of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers Jacob Mathew, who was elected in April, said today (Thursday, 13 October) as he opened the World Editors Forum in Vienna.

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:

Erin Burnett's ‘OutFront’ stumbles out of the gate — Erin Burnett's new primetime show is off to a rockier start than CNN probably had hoped—and not just in the ratings. The former CNBC star's 7 p.m. show, “OutFront,” drew 535,000 total viewers in her debut, according to Nielsen Research …

Discussion: Business Insider and Chickaboomer

Chris O'Shea / FishbowlNY:

Us Weekly Stays The Course, Keeps EIC — Despite Us Weekly suffering through some poor newsstand sales, the magazine is keeping Mike Steele, its Editor-in-Chief, reports The New York Post. When Steele began as Editor-in-Chief last year sales were healthy, but as his contract inched toward ending, times have been much tougher:

Discussion: eBookNewser

@nbcnewspr:

Ted Koppel named Special Correspondent for @RockCenterNBC. RELEASE: http://t.co/3wQ2T4rI

Discussion: Media Decoder and MediaPost

MiamiHerald.com:

Ga.'s Morris to focus on digital journalism — AUGUSTA, Ga. — Morris Communications Co. announced Wednesday it is restructuring the company to create a “digital-first” approach across its media divisions. — The Augusta-based company on Wednesday named Mark Lane from The Florida Times-Union …

Discussion: Big News Network.com